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Updated: September 30, 2025
The lodging-houses, fast as they could be put up, were crowded, and were of the most wretched description. The best to which I could gain admission was a long barn-like edifice, with bunks or berths like those on board a ship, arranged along on either side with straw, hay, or leaves as a mattress, and a horsecloth as a coverlet. The gambling-houses were the most attractive.
Soon after Lord Granville's appointment, a strange occurrence took place at one of the public gambling-houses. A colonel, on half-pay, in the British service, having lost every farthing that he possessed, determined to destroy himself, together with all those who were instrumental in his ruin.
Saloons, gambling-houses and dance-halls multiplied, while an oligarchy, ever grasping for more power, nullified the laws and trampled the statutes under its feet. The sins of drunkenness and bribery among policemen, who were simply the creatures for the most part of corrupt politicians, were too frequent to attract much notice.
Lights still gleamed from a few saloons and gambling-houses; but, avoiding these, they stopped before several closed shops, and by persistent tapping and judicious outcry roused the proprietors from their beds, and made them unbar the doors of their magazines and expose their wares.
Here the thief and the assassin seek sanctuary; it is a city of refuge for lost souls. The numerous gambling-houses are so cautiously guarded that only the private police can ferret them out. Door upon door is shut against you; or some ingenious panel is slid across your path, and you are unconsciously spirited away through other avenues.
Petersburg, Moscow, and Odessa. Drunkenness and debauchery reigned paramount. Low gambling-houses, café chantants, and less reputable establishments flourished under the liberal patronage of the Russian officers, who, out of sheer ennui, ruined their pockets and constitutions with drunken orgies, night and day.
What took up all his thoughts was the state of the world in which his brothers and he were living. How was that to be made better? As he went up and down in his father's kingdom, he beheld hovels in which poor people had to live, and drink-shops, and gambling-houses, and prisons. He was always asking himself, how are evils like these to be put away?
These gambling-houses were the very fountains of immorality: they gathered together, under the most seductive circumstances, the swindler and the swindled. There were tables for all classes the workman might play with 20 sous, or the gentleman with 10,000 francs. The law did not prevent any class from indulging in a vice that assisted to fill the coffers of the municipality of Paris.
It was considered the proper thing to introduce strangers to the Beau, who thereupon unblushingly demanded his initiation fee, and his impudence sometimes secured him a generous sum. He was always ready to pilot his victims to gambling-houses and other questionable resorts, and for a quarter of a century he lived on the blackmail thus levied upon strangers.
The old respectable population of the old respectable city had disappeared, it seemed. The old respectable habitudes had fallen into contempt. Gambling-houses swarmed everywhere; and the military police ignored them.
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